Battlefield 1943 (review)

I’ve seen a dozen accidents in my lifetime. Driving home in the middle of the night, two SUVs rammed into each other while I waited at a red light. Another time, I saw an old man drive his car over a curb and launch the front of his sedan onto a picnic table bolted to the floor. He mistook the break pedal for the gas, and he and his car ended up danging in a 45 degree angle above the ground.

There’s a story in each one of these encounters. Anecdotes from the random things happening around us. A similar thread runs through online multiplayer games. Given the number of players and the infinite possibility of actions, there’s a wealth of stories in every death match or capture the flag game.

Over the past week, I’ve been fiendishly addicted to Battlefield 1943 to the detriment of everything else. I’ve seen my share of explosions. I’ve fought in back-and-forth tug-of-wars and in blow outs, but what’s amazing is the number of anecdotes I’ve had playing the game. Talking with friends about these instances is almost as fun as experience itself. Battlefield 1943 is just one those games that lets you create your own narrative instead of having one told to you.

Since the success of the original Battlefield in 2002, the developer, DICE, has created dozens of spin-offs and an original hit, but there’s still something compelling about the idea of playing as a World War II soldier fighting against other teams over land, air and sea. What made the original so successful is that players can transition from shooting through the trenches to blasting bunkers in a tank to flying a plane on a bombing run so easily.

And what ties everything together is the gameplay concept of control points that teams have to own in order to drain the other team’s tickets (aka life bar). It forces players to switch hats and fight in a number of roles. In addition, the rules also encourage teamwork among players. They’ll help each other out ferrying them across the sea or they’ll hop atop a tank to machine gun pesky infantry soldiers.

The Battlefield concept never gets boring, especially with three classes to explore and five vehicles to control. There’s always some story to tell about sneaking behind enemy lines to snag a control point or single-handedly take over a spot by ambushing the foes guarding it.

What ups the ante in Battlefield 1943 is that DICE uses an updated engine for the gameplay. In 12 vs. 12 matches, fans will fight across familiar Pacific campaign maps of Guadalcanal, Wake Island and Iwo Jima. (There’s also a Coral Sea map, but that becomes eventually unlocked when there are 43 million kills on a platform.) With DICE’s Frostbite engine, the title looks significantly better compared to its predecessor, but the changes are more than skin deep.

With the new engine, players now have to worry about destructable environments and physics. I’ve been in a situation where I thought I was safe hiding from a tank in a building. I assumed I could fire at the heavy armor with impunity, but that all changed when the tank blew up the wall I was hiding behind. I died in the explosion and rubble.

The new system also offers creates insane action-flick scenarios where someone fires a missile at a jeep and players will see the car explode and somersault forward in a giant flaming mess. Other times, soldiers can see a plane cart wheel across the ground in a bad landing.

At first, this whole experience can be intimidating. There’s a lot going on, but DICE’s game has an easy learning curve. It’s a team-based game that’s not as punishing as say Counter-Strike, but it’s also not as arcadelike as Quake. Battlefield 1943 continues the team’s tradition of well-balanced games, and with many more hours ahead of me, I’m sure I’ll have enough stories to last the life of the game.